19 comments:

Well done, sir. I really enjoy your blog, and thought you hit it on the head when you said that paper wealth was completely based on future industrial production that won't happen. Thanks, and thank you Janaia! I've enjoyed many of your videos, too!

Good to see and hear you! Thanks for continuing to patiently repeat yourself, and for going to the trouble of presenting different metaphors, different phrases to try to get across the same message.

Every time I hear your explanations, I think of more ways to adjust, and see the ways I am still foot-dragging.

A few more people in my neighborhood are showing an interest in what I'm doing, and I am answering their questions. And yes, X and Y have not been very receptive to my initial attempts to engage them around the topic of collapse. But as I continue to do the things that I can do on my own, I find their resistance ebbing. Your encouragement helped me see that if I don't do what I can ahead of time, that telling myself it's because no one wanted to help me won't put water in my glass or food in my belly.

Throughout your writings, it becomes apparent that Hard Choices will need to be made: who to feed, and who to let starve.Only so many extra-seats are available on your boat, and only so many meals may be served without consuming next year's seed.While we are not yet forced to ask these questions, where and how does one draw these lines?

I thoroughly enjoyed your latest video, it was time/effort well spent on spreading your message. You come across quite knowledgeable/informed. I hope to see more of you in the coming days. I understand that you'll be speaking at the upcoming ASPO, and would encourage you to seek out Nicole Foss - a like minded compatriot, I believe you share a lot in common. As always I wish you (and yours) the absolute "best."

I don't think that this is any different from what goes on now. How many people have to be denied basic medical care so that somebody or other can get their pooch serviced at the "Pawsh" boutique on Newbury St. in Boston?

A previous commenter mentioned Nicole Foss. I have heard some of her presentations via mp3 files, and I also respect much of what she has to say. However, I have a few concerns about the Automatic Earth site run by her and her writing partner. My problem is this:

Dimitry mentioned in the Peak Moment interview that a debt-based economy will unavoidably collapse at some point due to the amount of interest owed by debtors on the debts held by creditors. Dimitry's perspective is therefore focused on how to prepare oneself to live post-collapse - how to live without money or other ties to a collapsing system, how to live gracefully with a lot less.

The Automatic Earth echoes many elements of this same perspective. However, the writers also spend a lot of time agonizing over the arcane details of the day-to-day unfolding of our present collapse, while castigating the policy makers who run things for not doing the right thing. That seems like a waste of time to me.

The other thing is that some of the advice on the Automatic Earth seems geared toward telling "ordinary" people with surplus paper wealth how they can preserve the notional value of their paper through the present time of deleveraging. The idea is that if you can preserve as many paper claims on wealth as possible, then once deflation has run its course, you can secure a lot of resources for your survival.

Or, you can begin to give yourself a burgeoning case of hypertension by trying to preserve your paper, which is where I was headed until I quit my office job this year and started cutting my expenses. But who knows? Maybe my perspective is mistaken.

Even though you certainly don't seem to be one who would much care for gratuitous flattery, I still want to tell you that this video is the first one I've chosen to embed in my blog that hardly anybody really reads. :-)